Apple iPhone 8

Pros

Cons

Lacks the latest modem features and bands.
Single camera is a disadvantage for AR.

Bottom Line

The iPhone 8 anchors Apple's new phone line, but it isn't where the future is.

28 Sep 2017

Apple doesn't slide backward, but sometimes it moves forward slowly. The new iPhone 8 ($699 for 64GB; $849 for 256GB) rests a little bit on Apple's laurels. While it's an excellent phone, it doesn't bring any radical new consumer features for owners of the iPhone 7 or even 6s models. Its powerful new A11 processor sets the stage for Apple's augmented reality future, but if you're interested in that, the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X are better bets.

Before we begin, I'd like to note the score above: 3.5 stars, the lowest we've rated an iPhone in a while. The iPhone 8 has some class-leading features, most notably that A11 processor and a camera that matches other $700 flagships. But on price-performance balance, it's the least appealing member of the iPhone family right now, and for that, we docked it half a star.

A Familiar Design

The iPhone 8 looks a lot like the iPhone 7, except that the metal back has been switched out for shimmering glass. At 5.45 by 2.65 by 0.29 inches (HWD) and 5.22 ounces, it's almost exactly the same size as the iPhone 7 (5.44 by 2.64 by 0.28 inches, 4.87 ounces), but heavier. There's still a camera bump on the back, a Lightning port on the bottom, and no headphone jack. The 1,334-by-750, 4.7-inch LCD is the same size and pixel density as the iPhone 7's, but it's been enhanced with Apple's True Tone technology, which gives better white balance in a range of different lighting conditions.

Below the screen, there's the traditional capacitive home button, with Touch ID. The iPhone 8 lacks the cool new Face ID technology in the iPhone X, keeping the fingerprint scanner alive for at least one more year. Dual speakers, at the top and bottom of the phone, promise louder sound than the iPhone 7 line, although we didn't hear a dramatic difference. The phone is also IP67 water-resistant, like the iPhone 7 generation.

Faster Than Ever

The new six-core A11 Bionic processor has two "high performance" and four "efficiency" cores. That's more than the four-core A10 and the two-core A9, but the whole core thing is a red herring; it's possible to design a fast processor with few cores, or many cores.

What makes it Bionic? Well, bionics is the science of combining biological and electronic parts and methods, so I think it's referring to the new Neural Engine. The Neural Engine is a custom block of the A11 dedicated to machine learning. On the iPhone 8, it doesn't do much yet, although it's involved in scene recognition in the camera app. But iOS 11 includes an API called CoreML that helps third-party developers integrate machine learning into their own apps—recognizing types of food or clothing when they train the camera, for instance.

The iPhone 8 and the 8 Plus have the same processor, although the 8 has 2GB of RAM and the 8 Plus has 3GB. That results in very similar benchmarks for the two phones. They're both the fastest phones we've ever tested and in the same class as the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro.

On the iPhone 8, we saw 207k on the Antutu benchmark, 4257 on Geekbench single-core, and 10,277 on Geekbench multi-core. The iPhone 7 got 165k, 3,500, and 6,024, respectively. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 pulled 175k, 1,870, and 6,500.

For graphics, the iPhone 8's 64,758 score on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited benchmark is nearly double that of the iPhone 7's 37,825. But wait! This is one area where Apple's steadfast refusal to improve its screen resolution does it no good. Last year's iPhones hit the 60 frame-per-second sync limit on the GFXBench graphics benchmarks, and this one does too. This iPhone's GPU is powerful enough to drive Apple's ProMotion 120Hz tablet screen; I just wish the phone had one.

For a real-world application, we recorded a 2-minute, 4K video, applied a filter in iMovie, and exported it to 720p. The iPhone 8 managed the export in 24 seconds as compared with the iPhone 7's 31 seconds. That's a noticeable difference, but we couldn't find other apps where the difference between 7 and 8 performance was easily visible; iOS apps are just too well-architected for a range of phones. The IKEA AR furniture-placement app, for instance, runs perfectly smoothly on the 7.

All of these benchmarks create headroom. The iPhone 7 is already very fast in current applications, including the simple early ARKit apps. The open question is whether all of this neural and graphics power will make the iPhone 8 more effective in future AR experiences.

We took an in-depth look at the iPhone 8's modem using both lab tests and Ookla Speedtest Intelligence crowdsourced data. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com's parent company.) It's faster than previous iPhones, but not necessarily $150 faster than the iPhone 7, and it doesn't match up on modem features to the Galaxy S8, as you can see in the chart below.

Apple argues that US carriers haven't yet installed the kinds of networks where faster modems would make a difference. But Canadian carriers have, and US carriers will over the next two years. The phone also lacks a key feature, 4x4 MIMO, that improves performance in weak signal areas. That's true about all iPhones, but we wish Apple had been more aggressive here.

Charge!

The iPhone 8 brings two new power technologies to the table: Qi-compatible wireless charging and fast charging. The more wattage you bring to your charger, the faster the phone will charge, Apple tells me, all the way up to using a MacBook charger to get to 50 percent in 30 minutes.

We tried Qi with both a new Mophie wireless charging pad designed for iPhones, and with a Samsung wireless charging pad. It worked with both. Lie-flat wireless charging solves the "charge and listen" problem with iPhones; now, you can charge the phone while using Lightning headphones. Or, of course, just use wireless headphones.

Wireless charging is slow, as it is on most other phones. With the phone starting at about 30 percent battery, we managed a 24 percent increase in an hour. Compare that with a 36 percent increase with the standard iPhone charger, or a 67-to-70 percent increase with an iPad charger. Apple says a firmware update will enable faster wireless charging in the future. If you're upgrading to the iPhone 8, we really suggest investing in an iPad charger. You can grab one for $19 and dramatically speed up your charging time.

Apple says the iPhone 8 will have roughly the same battery life as the iPhone 7. In our tests, we saw 6 hours, 25 minutes of video streaming time, noticeably better than the iPhone 7's 5 hours, 45 minutes.

One Camera Doesn't Rule Them All

The iPhone 8 has a single 12-megapixel, f/1.8 main camera, as well as a 7-megapixel, f/2.2 front camera. The main camera is optically stabilized, while the front one is not. Apple says the main camera will deliver better photos than the current iPhone 7's main camera does. The A11 processor brings some new modes to video recording, with 4K video now up to 60 frames per second and 1080p video in slow-mo at 240fps.

For images shot in decent light, Fisher points out that there's negligible difference between the best that Apple and Samsung are currently providing. There's also, we're sorry to say, "marginal" improvement over the iPhone 7 and 6s. However, there's a big jump between iPhone 6 (or Galaxy S7) performance and the more recent iPhones and Galaxies.

Apple's software for handling low-light, real-world situations appears to be better than Samsung's. On a city street at night, the iPhone did a better job pulling in highlights from bright signage and not blowing out streetlights. Once again, you shouldn't expect a big difference between the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 7 here, however.

The iPhone 8 also takes beautifully optically stabilized 4k videos. At the standard 30fps, there isn't much of an advantage over the iPhone 7. But if you're a real phone-based filmmaker, you'll enjoy the three different frame rate settings on the new phone: 24fps for a cinematic look, 30fps to match traditional video, and 60fps for that ultra-smooth fast-action appearance.

Overall, though, expect only small improvements from the iPhone 7 camera. The 8 also lacks the 8 Plus and X's second camera, and I think that's going to be important for more than the ability to 2x zoom.

Apple's moving aggressively into augmented reality, and a single-camera phone is at a major disadvantage when it comes to mapping the depth of spaces. Using two cameras, like the iPhone 8 Plus—or even better, the iPhone X's front-facing IR dot projector—makes it notably easier to do high-quality augmented reality.

We saw this when we were demoing ARKit with Apple a few weeks ago. In its current state, ARKit can only map horizontal surfaces. It can't figure out a whole room, including the walls and ceiling, the way Microsoft's HoloLens can. That may be a limitation of a single-camera device.

iOS 11: Does the Phone Make a Difference?

The iPhone 8, like the iPhone 7 and 6s, runs iOS 11. We have a complete iOS 11 review that goes into the new features in depth. But as iOS 11 runs just fine on last year's less-expensive iPhones, it isn't an inherent reason to buy the iPhone 8. Apple isn't, right now, holding back any OS features to run exclusively on the new hardware or processor.

If you're deciding between an Android phone and an iPhone, though, I'd point out some major aspects where the OSes differ: Messages, the AR/VR split, services, and privacy.

If you have a lot of friends with iPhones, and you live in the US, Messages might tip the scale for you. Messages is the iPhone's default texting app (formerly iMessage), and it has much richer group messaging, presence, and stickers than SMS does. Later this year, it'll also get Venmo-like abilities to send money between iPhone owners. In countries where everybody uses Whatsapp or WeChat, this isn't such a big deal. But in the US, where default texting apps dominate, Messages tends to build iPhone-only social groups that can leave Android users out of the loop. If at least several of your other friends have Android phones, though, it won't have the critical mass to matter so much.

Apple is going big on augmented reality where Android is stronger on virtual reality. AR is about placing virtual objects in the real world; VR is about strapping on a headset and shooing the real world away. So far, there's no VR solution for iPhones, and Google is several months behind Apple on AR. I think AR has a broader appeal, because VR headsets tend to get sweaty and a little claustrophobic.

Augmented reality also might be a reason to trade up to a Plus-sized iPhone rather than the 8. Not only could it work better in the future with dual cameras, a bigger screen gives you a more immersive AR experience.

The more you use either Apple's or Google's services, the better the iOS or Android experience becomes. Apple really wants you to use Apple Music, for example; if you ask Siri to play music, she'll try to do it through Apple Music. Similarly, iCloud is baked more deeply into the OS than other cloud services. The Gmail experience on iOS is okay, but it's better on Android. You get the drill.

Finally, Apple is stronger on privacy than Google is. Google's business is data, and you should assume it's collecting data on everything you do. Apple's business is primarily hardware, and it's less likely to share your data with others.

Pricing and Conclusions

The iPhone 8, at $699 and $849, suffers from one major problem: the iPhone 7 is now $549. And the 8 just isn't $150 better—yet. The major improvements here are wireless charging, which I still think is basically a curiosity, and the A11 processor. The A11 is amazing, but there just isn't much that stresses it right now other than augmented reality, and if you want the best augmented-reality phone, you should go with the 8 Plus or the X.

So we're recommending the iPhone 7 and the iPhone SE, for now, to people looking for a smaller iPhone. I think that next year's models are going to mark a major change for Apple, with dramatic new augmented reality capabilities, and you might as well keep some money in your pocket aside for that one.

If you're looking at an 8, the 8 Plus will bring you closer to Apple's new reality, but I'm really interested in checking out the iPhone X, which is coming next month. We'll revise this conclusion after we've seen it.

As for the old iPhone vs. Android question: the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Moto Z2 Force match the iPhone on camera and battery, and outpace it on screen and LTE performance. The iPhone has a faster processor. But ultimately, the iPhone's strength isn't in the specs. It's in the community and support—the ability to join group Messages chats with other iPhone users, to get things fixed quickly at a Genius Bar, and to be the first to see cutting-edge, gorgeously designed new augmented reality games.

So while we've rated the iPhone 8 lower than previous models, we don't think it's a bad choice. It just isn't the best choice of iPhone.

About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.

Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed to the Frommer's series of travel guides and Web sites for more than a decade. Other than his home town of New York, his favorite ... See Full Bio